About
Miguel Ángel Rojas began clandestinely photographing encounters between gay men at movie theaters in Bogotá in the late 1970s. Documenting gay culture at the intersection of private and public space, the images that comprise Vía Láctea were shot through bathroom peepholes. First shown in 1980, Vía Láctea was installed four meters high so that the tiny photographic dots would mimic the crown molding design at the theaters. In the puritanical atmosphere of Bogotá at the time, the inability for viewers to see the images kept the work from being received and dismissed as vulgar and instead highlighted the marginality of the members of gay community and the spaces in which they understood and expressed their sexuality.